WibbleWobble

Hi Folks,

 

Managed to get some more time in the workshop and so turned my attention to my next task which was to get the coin inputs working. however I have actually ended up getting the Hopper's working.

 

I had purchased a pair of hoppers from eBay, however due to my not checking they turned out to be Serial. I thus started looking again and managed to find a pair of Azkoyen hoppers in Germany and the buyer was happy to ship to the UK.

 

The previous hoppers did however have the original mounting base with the correct quick release mountings, so I proceeded to use this and mount this on a shelf which I had added just above the PC.

 

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I then proceeded to test the coin output and found that the hoppers were  spraying coins in all directions.

 

Then whilst contemplating the issue and trying to work out how to solve this I had a browse on eBay and noticed that somebody was selling an Payout tray from a Barcrest Horizon cabinet. Having accidentally won a water damaged Barcrest Horizon based machine on eBay (I placed a bid and discussed sizes with the buyer, then the machine sold to somebody else) I then got a message asking if I wanted the cabinet as the buyer had only wanted the MPU cartridge, so I got and entire cabinet for nothing (albeit badly water damaged) 

 

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I proceeded to work out how to remove the Payout tray and cut a hole in my front door so I could add the payout tray

 

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I then proceeded to use a length of 40mm Black waste pipe (which I'm going to use for the coin routing from the coin mech to the hoppers) to make a system to catch the coins and direct them into the payout tray, via a 90 degree elbow

 

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After testing this, the coins in the hoppers (£1 and 10p) all payout and end up in the payout tray, following the excellent advice from Wizard in my post above, an issue I hadn't actually thought about, but why limit myself to only paying out in multiples of 20p.

 

Next task is to get the coins routed successfully from the Coin mech to the hoppers and coinbox, and also any that are rejected back to the payout tray.

 

Pete

 

 

 

Hello Again Folks,

 

Apologies for the long delay in an update to this project, however following on from a busy Christmas and a nice does of Flu like symptoms, I then got assigned work projects miles and miles from home resulting in an enforced break from the building of the cabinet, today I have managed to get back into the workshop and make some further progress.

 

First order of business was to make all the connections for the lamps and wire these back to the iPac boards, one of which had to go away to be re-programmed by Ultimarc. I cannot recommend highly enough the service that I got from Andy, who re-programmed my board for me even though I bought it from a re-seller In future I will be going straight to Andy for any boards I need.

 

The wiring of the lamps followed a similar colour as the former, with white wires being data/signal and red being the 12v supply. 

 

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These were then all fed back to the iPac which resides in the bottom of the cabinet next to the PC.

 

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I then decided that I would test the machine and just see if I could get the buttons to behave as they had on the test board, so after a period of continuity testing for peace of mind I fired up an old favourite or mine and programmed the lamps in MFME, and to my utter surprise everything worked first time. It was great to see the buttons lighting up and really adds to the immersion and feel of playing a 'real fruitmachine' 

 

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Next I hope to get the coin inputs working so that credits can be applied via the coin mech, then I will turn my attention to the hoppers for getting payout. I am hoping to get 2 hoppers to work, one for £1 coins and one for 20p coins.

 

Pete

 

 

Thanks folks, 

 

The Dyson does indeed need to be emptied, I was using it to try and clean up the workshop a bit 

 

If you saw the rest of the workshop, you'd see that ironically although I like the wiring and things neat I have a nasty habit of using something and then moving onto the next thing, meaning that I end up with piles of tools etc. allover the workbench.

 

Pete

Hi Folks,

 

Managed to get a little bit more done on the cabinet, have managed to get all the buttons wired back to the Earth link and then all the data connections back to the iPac which means that all the buttons can now be tested.

 

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As you can see I was getting confused as to which button was which so I ended up labeling them as when I started to configure the iPac I kept getting the buttons all mixed up ending up with some real weird results....

 

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Once all the ends were terminated at the iPac I was left with :

 

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I was then able to test that each button gave the  the desired keystroke when pressed. 

 

I have even been able run a test layout and play using the buttons which was great, as I can see some real progress.

 

I have decided to use the following wire colours Black for Ground, White for Data and Red for Live voltage. 

 

Hope everyone is well and looking forward to the festive period, when hopefully I will get a chance to do some more work on the cabinet.

 

Pete

 

 

Hi All,

 

Apologies for the lack of updates, a last minute urgent business trip to the Czech Republic has kind of got in the way of progress. However I have managed to make myself some inserts for the various buttons. I wanted something that was common across all the buttons. I found a very useful guide over on DAD's for adding multiple strokes within Photoshop and with a bit of playing I came up with the below:

 

 Buttons Layout new.jpg   174.27KB   9 downloads

 

Which when fitted to the buttons look like:

 

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Overall I think i'm pretty pleased with the look that they give. Hopefully will get some more time this week to work on the build.

 

Pete

 

 

Hello Again,

 

I have had a bit of an issue with fitting the coinmech due to a bit of a measuring oversight, but fortunately I think that I have managed to get away with it and progress on the cabinet can now continue with the wiring and connections of the buttons.

 

I fitted the coinmech into the back of the cabinet and checked it for position, 

 

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fortunately it cleared the monitor (just)

 

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with this in place I created a test piece to make sure that I could get the coin bezel to fit onto the monitor panel.

 

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Once that I had this, I was able to use it to create the holes in the monitor panel and mount the coin bezel on the machine.

 

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It was all seeming to go well, so then fitted the coinmech into the coinmech holder which I'd fitted back into the machine, when I fitted this back into the machine and tried to feed a coin in, the bezel and the coinmech didn't line up, I was slightly stumped, so I removed the monitor panel and re-fitted the test piece, which lined up perfectly, this was when I realised that I had clamped the test piece onto the outside of the cabinet and lined up the outside edges. thus meaning that the Coin Bezel was too far to the left looking from the front of the cabinet.

 

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So after a little bit of contemplating and measuring I realised that a piece of the Cabinet MDF fitted behind the coinmech holder would bring everything back in line, however this will mean that the bottom of the coinmech sorter will hit the monitor panel, so I would need to remove a piece from the side of the back of the monitor holder, shown below by the red rectangle.

 

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So I cut a piece of MDF and mounted it behind the coinmech holder, thus moving the coinmech the required 18mm and allowing everything to line up.

 

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with this piece of MDF in place and the coinmech mounted everything lined up as can be seen below:

 

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And the piece that I had cut out of the back of the monitor holder was large enough to allow the coin sorter to clear then monitor.

 

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Hope the post isn't to boring for folks.

 

 

Next I plan to move onto the wiring and position of the computer, I plan to mount the ipac and pac-drives on a board that will be able to be removed if needed.

 

Pete  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello Again,

 

Managed to make some further progress on the build today.

 

The monitor now has been mounted onto it's panel and the blocks for this to mount on have been put on the back of the front panel.

 

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Below is the main panel fitted into the cabinet with the buttons in place. I think that it is going to work quite well and the height and layout feels good.

 

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When the monitor was screwed in place to test I was really pleased with the fit and the space around the sides for access to the buttons for wiring etc.

 

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Next was to look at creating the main button panel for below the monitor, I have added the following fixed buttons on this panel

 

Cancel, Hold, Hold/Hi, Hold/Lo, Hold (for Club machines), Collect, Exchange, Special (Let's play Barcrest etc) and Start

 

 Button Panel.jpg   105.48KB   2 downloads

 

And when the control panel is fitted to the cabinet and with buttons in the holes:

 

 All Buttons in Place.jpg   111.6KB   3 downloads

 

Really starting to get a feel for how it will look, and I have to say I'm really pleased thus far.

 

Pete

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi All,

 

As you may have seen from some of my previous threads I have been collecting the bits to try and build a freestanding MFME cabinet. I have been inspired in this by Uptown and Reg and No1Stoney all of who seem to have made absolutely amazing cabinets. I just hope that my attempt will be playable once it is finished.

 

This weekend I managed to get some time and cut the sides of the machine, and when glued together they look like:

 

 Cabinet Sides.jpg   130.83KB   6 downloads

The reason that they are glued and not a single piece is that I do not have the space to handle a single sheet of MDF, so after some testing I have found that I can edge glue them and the result once cured is nigh on impossible to break at the join.

 

Once these were fully cured (next day) I then started to assemble the cabinet using join blocks so that the various panels can be removed to allow access to the innards.

 

 Side and Back.jpg   126.85KB   3 downloads

 

And once the other side and a base frame were added we have a self supporting basis of a skeleton.

 

 Sides and Back.jpg   134.35KB   3 downloads

 

This evening, I have been trying to create a screen mount and get the positioning of the buttons round the screen to a position that I am happy with.

 

Pete

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is looking great TommyC, I for one wouldn't have the first clue where to start, and I am appreciative of all the talented folks like you, Vec etc (apologies to all who didn't get a mention) who make these amazing DX and classic layouts for us to enjoy.

 

And lets be honest, you can spend more than a years gold membership on fancy coffee for 3 or 4 people these days!! and people think nothing of that but won't put their hand in their pocket to support the scene.

 

Pete

Hello folks,
Over the past couple of weeks I've been assembling parts and this weekend, got some time to actually put some of them together, using the excellent MFME keyboard guide by Reg, I managed to build the attached.



I then decided to move onto trying to get my coin mech to accept coins..... I have got a Cashflow 126Dfx which has been updated to accept the new £1 coin. The issue I have is that every coin that it should accept gets for flashes on the diagnostic LED. Which according to the manual is, 'coin recognised but not accepted due to inhibit setting.' I've read the manual from cover to cover and I know it is something amiss in my wiring, the question is does anybody have a wiring diagram, suitable for use with MFME. Or some guidance for a terminally confused but enthusiastic amateur.

Thanks in advance

Pete

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